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Tennis Quotes

“There may very well have been a tennis player named Dennis whose only reason for playing tennis was for the thrill of the rhyme. There may have even been two Tennis Dennises. In fact, with billions and billions of people, 200,000 years, give or take the years before tennis was a sport, there may have even been three. You might find that thinking this way expands your freedom, your consideration of your own capability, the spectrum of what all people can be, and can do.”

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Book:Handsome Vanilla
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“I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such — all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world — you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat.”

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Book:Hardcourt Confidential: Tales from Twenty Years in the Pro Tennis Trenches
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“His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human. To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.”

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Book:The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
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“When we plant a rose seed in the earth, we notice that it is small, but we do not criticize it as "rootless and stemless." We treat it as a seed, giving it the water and nourishment required of a seed. When it first shoots up out of the earth, we don't condemn it as immature and underdeveloped; nor do we criticize the buds for not being open when they appear. We stand in wonder at the process taking place and give the plant the care it needs at each stage of its development. The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change; yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”

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Book:The Inner Game of Tennis: The classic guide to the mental side of peak performance
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“Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players - and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer's opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis you stand face-to-face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They're inches away. In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement....”

LonelinessOpponentsTennisBoxingSolitary Confinement
Book:Open
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“Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport. His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted—correctly as it turned out—that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.”

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Author:Archie Henderson
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“Except in a very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning) when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will have lost. He may throw himself at the ball (so he will be able to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.”

LosingMindsetTennisJustificationExcusesSelf Betrayal
Book:Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationship, Coming to Ourselves
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“In any game, the game itself is the prize, no matter who wins, ultimately both lose the game.”

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Book:Wealth of Words
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“That night I spent in turmoil. Fitfully, I slept, I woke up, I slept again, and every time I slept I kept on dreaming of Micòl. I dreamt, for example, of finding myself, just like that very first day I set foot in the garden, watching her play tennis with Alberto. Even in the dream I never took my eyes off her for a second. I kept on telling myself how wonderful she was, flushed and covered with sweat, with that frown of almost fierce concentration that divided her forehead, all tensed up as she was with the effort to beat her smiling, slightly bored and sluggish older brother. Yet then I felt oppressed by an uneasiness, an embittered feeling, an almost unbearable ache.”

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Book:The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
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“And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they’re not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise… You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again…Mario thinks hard again. He’s trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? … And then but so what’s the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?”

QuoteTennisInfinite JestTennis BallsDavid Foster WallaceIjMario Incandenza
Book:Infinite Jest
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“When I can’t get to the sea water or to a tennis court, or out for a long, brisk walk, I work on stretch exercises at home. One that I do many times a day as I move around my apartment involves standing for a moment with my back again a wall. I dig my heels into the floor, stand straight, and place the palm of my hand between the small of my back and the wall. Keeping my chin level, I pull the crown of my head toward the ceiling. At the same time I push the small of my back toward the wall until there’s no longer room for my hand.”

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Book:My Way of Life
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“Hai visto che bella libertà?” Lui ha capito. Io poi mi sono messo a pensare a questa faccenda delle righe del campo da tennis, che danno claustrofobia. Il giocatore costretto a mettere la pallina sempre dentro la riga, ma non solo dentro la riga, ma più vicino possibile alla riga, ma più vicino vai alla riga più corri il rischio di mettere la pallina fuori dalla riga, cosa che è veramente angosciante e ossessiva e claustrofobica. E le righe sono sempre quelle e io lo so che i giocatori la notte vanno a dormire, chiudono gli occhi e vedono le righe, lo so che vedono righe ovunque e stanno attentissimi quando camminano a non calpestare le righe tra i blocchi di pietra dei marciapiedi, o del parquet, o delle mattonelle, che è difficilissimo. E non possono mai stare fermi a guardarle quelle righe: vanno su, vanno giù, ma non si fermano in mezzo al campo a guardare intorno perché c’è l’arbitro che gli dice “tempo!”, cosa che è ossessiva, claustrofobica e un pochino malvagia, secondo me. Tutto questo a mio figlio grande non l’avevo detto, gli avevo solo detto quella cosa sulla libertà. Il resto avrebbe dovuto capirlo da solo: che differenza c’è tra noi e i tennisti? Poca roba. Noi abbiamo le righe che ci siamo disegnati da soli e fatichiamo a non tirare fuori troppe palline. Se vuoi uscire dalle maledettissime righe – e dio solo sa se ci ho provato – arriva l’arbitro e fischia il fallo e ti porta dritto in galera. Poi ci sono quelli che dicono che quando ci si accorge che le righe sono troppo strette bisogna mettersi d’accordo tutti per spostarle. Oppure ci sono quelli che dicono che è inutile spostarle: è il concetto stesso di riga a essere sbagliato. E allora via, togliamo le righe. Ma io mi chiedo – e non è che io sia stato tanto a rispettarle quelle righe lì – una volta tolte, come si fa a giocare? Insomma io a mio figlio grande gliele direi queste cose, visto che è chiaro che passa giornate intere a discutere di quelle maledette righe coi suoi compagni dell’università: spostarle, cancellarle o che ne so io.”

TennisFuturoLibertàScelteScelte Di VitaObblighiRighe
Book:Un piccolo buio
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“Fu davvero una grande cosa per me, perché il tennis è uno sport così solitario ed essere in grado di giocare per qualcun altro, per qualcos'altro, per qualcosa più grande di te ma comunque in relazione con te, è un grande senso di soddisfazione... e per me giocare per il mio Paese e, ancor più importante, giocare per realizzare ciò che mio padre aveva sperato e che non era riuscito a realizzare nella sua esperienza olimpica... sentivo che stavo giocando per qualcosa più grande di me e l'avere lui lì era parte di questo.”

TennisVitaVittoria
Book:Open
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“I like pros, especially when it comes to tennis and rent boys” — and here I’m really wondering if the pun on prose consolidates Bruce’s feeling toward it versus poetry under the sign of sex, which Bruce sometimes pays for, in order to direct us toward the pleasure of its use-function when monetised, a pleasure seldom associated with poetry, and one that might lead to the company of more pros. He continues: “If I can get a twofer, and the trick looks like Rafael Nadal, I’m in heaven.”

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Book:Mature Themes
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